Showing posts with label wings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wings. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 15, 2020


Wings




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Tuesday, June 24, 2014






by Robyn Bahr
June 24, 2014 2:38 PM



Not since  I Spit on Your Grave have I seen such an intrepid and compelling rape-revenge film.

I am talking, of course, about Disney's Maleficent, the latest in a long line of revisionist fairy-tale epics to hit theaters in the last few years, though this might be the first one that I actually found personally inspiring. And it goes further in its exploration of sexual assault than any mainstream fantasy film might dare.

Maleficent presents the "untold" backstory of Disney's classic Sleeping Beauty villain, portraying the dark fairy in her youth as a winged protector of a colorful, enchanted forest kingdom inhabited by a number of magical creatures. She is fierce and loyal to her homeland, relying on her magnificent wings not only as weapons for defense against invading armies, but as boons to surveil her personal paradise. They aren't just instruments: they are a part of who she is and how she lives.

In a pivotal moment early in the film, Maleficent is raped. The rape is not via a sex act, though to be fair, rape is never about sex at all: it's about power. And power, in this case, will literally be bestowed on anyone in the neighboring kingdom who can provide the crown with Maleficent's corpse. After years of silence, her long-lost human love Stefan (Sharlto Copley) returns to her and they share the twilight together in the glow of wistful reunion. Maleficent suddenly slips into sleep; your stomach drops as you realize Stefan has drugged her drink. Your heart stops when you understand he intends to sever her wings.

Many commenters have debated whether this film is about rape at all and whether that subject matter, even veiled, is appropriate for young audiences. Others have reminded us that the filmmakers are putting the subtext of the original story back where it belongs.

Instead of shying away from the connection, Angelina Jolie has thankfully seized the opportunity to be honest about her intent: "We were very conscious, the writer [Linda Woolverton] and I, that it was a metaphor for rape," Jolie said in an interview with BBC Woman's Hour. The actress, an advocate for women's issues around the world, recently spoke at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, commenting on the struggles of rape survivors in countries torn apart by war. Jolie knew what she was doing with this role: she was shining a light on the diverse emotional difficulties of women who are attacked, injured, and humiliated when they are most vulnerable.

But this is no Lifetime movie-of-the-week. Beautifully, it embraces its own darkness. Too often, rape on screen is at best denied and at worst, made to seem arousing. Stefan doesn't wrestle with Maleficent or "take her by force," the typical image we've come to associate with rape. (He may exploit her body, but the camera does not.) Nor does she change her mind in the middle, or consent and then regret it later. She is unconscious. Period. And when Maleficent awakes, Stefan gone and with him something so deeply ingrained in her identity, she cries out in physical and emotional agony for nearly a minute. It is brutal to witness.

But it is important to watch her pain, to see her suffering and how it manifests into the blackness she shrouds around her kingdom and her own body. She doesn't cower, but instead chooses rage. Maleficent is not ashamed; she's ready to inflict pain. Real-life survivors have many ways of coping with sexual assault, but there is something deeply gratifying about seeing a movie star, larger-than-life on the big screen, don a decadent black cape to confront the man who has stripped her of a piece of herself and simply fuck his shit up. It's commonly brought up in feminist discourse that women are socialized to modulate our personalities to appear "pleasant" or "nice" and certainly undemanding. When Maleficent walks in her own anger, it is powerful to behold.

What makes this film truly audacious, however, is not its portrayal of Maleficent's wrath or cynicism, but how it pushes the rape symbolism to include an aspect of sexual assault that is often ignored, denied, or papered over: pregnancy. Maleficent does not physically give birth to Aurora/Sleeping Beauty, but the girl is still a child of rape. When Stefan slices off our heroine's wings and presents them to his king, he is given the hand of the royal princess and secures his place as next in line for the throne. Without Maleficent's wings, he never would have been able to marry the royal woman. There is no Aurora had her father not violated the woman he claimed to love. There is no Aurora without Maleficent.

When Maleficent barges into the infant's christening and curses her to eternal sleep upon the prick of her finger, she has no intention of true love's kiss returning the girl to consciousness; she doesn't believe in true love now that the illusion has hurt her. Yet she remains drawn to the child, even after three squabbling pixies whisk Aurora away to the woods for her own safety. Maleficent is fueled by her hatred, calling her "beastie." She is fearful of her, disgusted by her. But even against her own rational judgment, she slowly begins to protect the child as she watches her from afar, using her magic to keep the curious little girl from harm. The audience begins to understand this is not just a story about revenge, but about the complicated mother-child relationship that can arise from violence.

Later, Aurora finds her "fairy godmother" and Maleficent is entranced by her metaphorical daughter and consumed by the guilt of cursing her all those year ago. It would be easy to dismiss the film as sentimental by the time Maleficent discovers that only she can provide the "true love's kiss" of her own doing, even politically conservative for seemingly suggesting the birth of a child from rape could be rewarding. But that would be diminishing the beauty and power of that moment and of this rare mother-daughter action film.

I loved Maleficent because we need images of women's sexual trauma and anger, not for the sake of fetishism or torture porn or sexual thrill, but to show that there is just as much pain in "invisible" violence as there is in the assault narrative we normally see portrayed. We need them to fuel activism and to strengthen the voices of those who are hesitant to reveal their experiences. Maleficent is loud and proud and making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Frozen, ostensibly about the dangers of suppressing your feelings and personality for the sake of others, is now the fifth highest grossing film of all time. These movies are making money. People are responding.

Robyn Bahr is a writer and humorist who lives in Cambridge, MA. She tweets @RobynBahr about television, pop culture, and fat politics.





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Thursday, June 12, 2014








by Sam Adams
June 12, 2014 2:25 PM

For anyone who's seen "Maleficent" with adult eyes, it's hard to avoid the fact that the scene where a drugged fairy queen is shorn of her wings by a disloyal lover bears a distinct resemblance to rape, one that's underlined by Angelina Jolie's anguished reaction when she discovers she's been mutilated. And in an interview with the BBC Radio Hour, Jolie has confirmed that's what she and screenwriter Linda Woolverton had in mind: "We were very conscious, the writer and I, that it was a metaphor for rape," Jolie said.

At Femamom, Hayley Kirscher wrote that Sharlto Copley's Stefan "doesn’t kill her. He rapes her of her ability to fly," a suggestion that struck some readers as offensively simplistic and others as entirely on-point. (For once, the comments are worth reading.) Badass Digest's Devin Faraci called it a "rape/revenge retelling" of Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" -- "I Spit on Your Grave" for tweens.

In the wake of Jolie's statement, we're bound to hear people complaining that rape has no place in a story for children -- one that, with its pat psychological rationalizations and trite happy ending somehow manages to Disneyfy a Disney movie. But at In These Times, Sady Doyle pointed out that the original story of "Sleeping Beauty" has always been, at least partly, about rape, including entirely unmetaphorical requirement that she be "kissed" by a boy while she lies in a state of permanent unconsciousness. (I think "Kill Bill's" Bride might have a comment on that part.)
Indeed, you could even argue that the central curse of "Sleeping Beauty" -- the prediction that, on her sixteenth birthday, the beautiful princess shall "prick her finger" on a spindle and fall into a "sleep like death" -- is a rape allegory, one of those wild and eerie and inappropriate bits of dream imagery that give fairy tales their enduring power. When the princess is a child, she's safe. But as soon as she reaches sexual maturity, she will be penetrated. There will be blood, and pain, and it will cause her to fall into a living death. If you buy the idea that fairy tales were women's stories -- coded ways of passing down wisdom about the world -- the "pricking your finger on a spindle" story is a very effective way to talk about how sexual assault (or sex and marriage more generally, in heavily patriarchal societies where women didn’t get to choose their partners or exert power within relationships) can feel like the end of a woman's life.
The problem with "Maleficent" isn't that its inciting incident is a metaphor for rape; it's everything that surrounds it. The story as it's (re)conceived would require Maleficent to grow twisted and cruel, to internalize the harm done to her and take it out on the world around her -- on everyone, that is, but her rapist, whom she punishes by proxy through cursing his newborn daughter. But the movie spends every minute after that moment of palpable darkness running as fast and as far away from it as it can. Maleficent, we learn, is not a larger-than-life icon, but a misguided victim who spends years trying to make up for a single, irrevocable mistake. She nurtures Elle Fanning's Aurora, eventually becoming a surrogate mother to her, trying to protect her from a curse that even she cannot undo.

The requirement to soften Maleficent up robs Jolie's performance of its grandeur and its pathos, which until then has been substantial. Given how tawdry the rest of the movie looks, it seems as if director Robert Bromberg spent about 90 percent of his time on set adorning Jolie with the lighting of a silent-movie goddess, and it was time well spent: She's magnificent, the kind of figure about whom stories will be told for aeons. But once she starts nurturing Aurora, she's reduced in stature; it's like seeing Norma Desmond babysit. She was big; it's the movie that got small.

Fairy tales have always been a means of processing fears, sometimes as a cautionary tale, sometimes for the sole purpose of reminding children that the world is a dangerous and sometimes terrible place. At its best, "Maleficent" comes to terms with that horror; at its worst, it tells us to forget it.

Read the original post at indiewire














By: Kirsty McCormack
During an interview on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour show on Tuesday, the mother-of-six admitted that the harrowing scene in which Maleficent has her wings torn off, has a much darker meaning.
"We were very conscious, the writer [Linda Woolverton] and I, that it was a metaphor for rape," she explained. "And that this would be the thing that would make her lose sight of that.
"At a certain point, the question of the story is what could possibly bring her back?"
The act of violence takes place as her character is in a drug-induced sleep, but was filmed in such a way that children could still watch it.
Angelina went on to explain that while it is "an extreme Disney, fun version of it", essentially, the film is about "abuse, and how the abused then have a choice of abusing others or overcoming and remaining loving, open people".
"The question was asked: 'What could make a woman become so dark and lose all sense of her maternity, her womanhood and her softness?' Something would have to be so violent and aggressive," she continued.
Linda Woolverton previously explained during a separate interview that the movie was "a reinvention, not just a retelling" of the classic Sleeping Beauty fairytale.
"[We] created a past for her that led to the moment in which she curses Aurora, then takes us past that moment from Maleficent's point of view," she said.
Of course, it was apt for Angelina to be speaking about sexual violence during the live broadcast as she is currently in London for the 'End Sexual Violence in Conflict' summit.
The Summit welcomes governments from over 100 countries, over 900 experts, NGOs, Faith leaders, and representatives from international organizations across the world.
Yesterday, Angelina spent time with victims and survivors of sexual violence and was reduced to tears as she heard one woman's story.
This morning she was accompanied by her fiance Brad Pitt as she arrived for another day of the summit, and looked sleek and smart in an all black outfit.
The Hollywood couple were also joined by Foreign Secretary William Hague, who described Angelina as "a pleasure to work with".
"My admiration for her work has grown even greater over the last two years," he said.
"She has the power to speak to the whole world, to raise awareness, change attitudes. Governments like the one I am a member of hold in their hands levers of decision making and action. And this combination can be formidable.
"And is in many respects a strong example of the future of foreign policy and how it should be conducted. It's no longer the sole preserve of governments."





Maleficent is a worldwide, all-ages hit, drawing children and adults alike to a story crammed with fairies, sword fights, and the healing power of magic. It is also, at least in part, about rape.
Many grown-ups who have seen the film already suspected as much from the scene in which Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent is violated by Sharlto Copley’s King Stefan, a man she trusted. He drugs her and cuts off her massive wings. Now Jolie has confirmed that the scene deliberately echoes the too-familiar beats of the date-rape narrative. “We were very conscious, the writer [Linda Woolverton] and I, that it was a metaphor for rape,” Jolie said during an interview with BBC Woman’s Hour. Jolie had spoken forcefully at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, on Tuesday, demanding an end to rape as a tool of war. “It is a myth that rape is an inevitable part of conflict,” she said at the Summit. “There is nothing inevitable about it.”
It’s not hard to imagine a similarly impassioned speech about rape as used in Hollywood narratives, where it is more often used as a plot device to spur the hero into action than any thoughtful consideration of the meaning of the crime. Maleficent may have muddled messages—the fact that Maleficent’s entire motivation as a villain is rejection by a man is not a great feminist message—but it takes the metaphorical rape scene seriously, in no small part thanks to Jolie’s committed performance. And it’s not the first time her interest in this cause has come through on film—her directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, included multiple frank depictions of rape committed by soldiers against civilian women during the Bosnian War. The war in Maleficent may involve enchanted thorn forests and a magical kiss, but Jolie is taking it seriously as a way to spread awareness of an issue she cares about deeply. It’s one thing to speak in front of global dignitaries about the need to combat rape; it’s quite another to slip that message into a global blockbuster.









 Sally Holmes
In an interview with BBC Radio's Woman's Hour on Tuesday, Angelina Jolie spoke about the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict she co-chaired and a violent scene in her new film, Maleficent, which she reveals is a metaphor for rape. When asked about the moment when Jolie's character has her wings torn away by a childhood friend, the actress says it was a scene she and the writer, Linda Woolverton, thought a lot about:
"The question was asked: 'What could make a woman become so dark and lose all sense of her maternity, her womanhood, and her softness?' Something would have to be so violent and aggressive and so of course for us, we were very conscious, the writer [Woolverton] and I, that it was a metaphor for rape. And that this would be the thing that would make her lose sight of that," Jolie explains in the interview. "And then at a certain point, the question of the story is 'what could bring her back?' And again it is an extreme Disney, fun version of it, but at the core it is abuse, and how the abused then have a choice of abusing others or overcoming and remaining loving, open people."
Earlier this week at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, Jolie spoke about the importance of giving victims of sexual assault support in an effort to end the violence: "We must send a message around the world that there is no disgrace in being a survivor of sexual violence, that the shame is on the aggressor. We must work together in new and unprecedented ways across borders and religions, bringing governments and people together and tackling the problem from every possible angle. And by doing this, we can end the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war once and for all. We really can do it."







 | By Nina Bahadur
Angelina Jolie has confirmed that a controversial scene in her recent movie "Maleficent" serves as an analogy for rape.
During an interview with BBC Radio's Women's Hour on June 10, Jolie answered a question about a climactic scene in the film that has been interpreted by some as a metaphor for sexual assault. In the scene, title character Maleficent is drugged by a man she's in love with, who then removes her wings and robs her of the ability to fly.
"We were very conscious, the writer and I, that [the scene in question] was a metaphor for rape," Jolie said. "The core of ["Maleficent"] is abuse, and how the abused have a choice of abusing others or overcoming and remaining loving, open people."
In the film, a retelling of "Sleeping Beauty," Maleficent takes revenge against her former lover's daughter, Aurora, by cursing her as an infant. Jolie told BBC Radio 4 that the original betrayal and assault were what catalyzed Maleficent's vengeful behavior, marking her change from a benevolent fairy into a villainous character: "The question was asked, 'What could make a woman become so dark? To lose all sense of her maternity, her womanhood, and her softness?'"
The film's writer, Linda Woolverton, explained to The Hollywood Reporter that the scene is critical in making Maleficent's actions understandable to the audience.
"The biggest challenge [making the film] was how to make a villain into a protagonist," Woolverton told Aaron Couch on June 2. "How on earth was I going to justify that this woman would curse a baby?"













boxoffice.com
Tweet counts and analysis for Wednesday June 11th
Top 15 Movies for Wednesday June 11th
Rk Film Tue Wed Week Tue-Wed %
1 (-) The Fault in Our Stars 246,462 164,069 646,991 -33.43%
2 (+1) Maleficent 69,880 82,060 214,538 17.43%
3 (-1) 22 Jump Street 79,925 81,419 219,956 1.87%
4 (+1) Dumb and Dumber To 11,067 34,361 45,709 210.48%
5 (-1) Edge of Tomorrow 14,186 14,922 46,853 5.19%
6 (+1) X-Men: Days of Future Past 7,729 12,165 28,404 57.39%
7 (-1) How to Train Your Dragon 2 8,549 10,816 26,643 26.52%
8 (+3) If I Stay 4,746 8,717 18,181 83.67%
9 (-) Transformers: Age of Extinction 5,437 7,524 16,755 38.39%
10 (+80) Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame To Kill For 16 4,561 4,612 28406.25%
11 (+4) The Amazing Spider-Man 2 3,078 3,618 9,797 17.54%
12 (-) The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 4,440 3,568 11,845 -19.64%
13 (-) Godzilla (2014) 3,943 3,218 11,208 -18.39%
14 (+22) The Penguins of Madagascar 453 3,217 4,067 610.15%
15 (+34) The Interview (2014) 305 3,144 3,689 930.82%
Please check the methodology page for information about our Twitter project or here for historic data.

















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Thursday, May 29, 2014







Angelina Jolie answers our burning questions

Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Angelina Jolie is on the cusp of what is likely the most important year of her career. With her darker, big-budget take on Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, hitting theaters Friday, we sit down with the fairest of them all to tackle our burning questions.
1. When is the big day already?
It's official: She and Brad Pitt have been engaged for over two years, and together for 10. "We don't have any plans to get married at the moment. Nothing is organized. Nothing is ready. I don't have a dress," says Jolie. But she understands the interest. "It matters to us in a very private way. But we also understand that we're public people."

MORE: With 'Maleficent,' Angelina Jolie begins historic year

2. Which of her children had the strongest reaction to Maleficent?
Knox! "Every time he sees a bird outside the house, he wants me to go outside and change it into something. Instead I just say, 'No, I'm not changing anything but I will go speak to him.' So we bring the bird food and I have to talk to every black bird — in an English accent. (The children) often make me do the voice, regularly. Knox has perfected his, 'Well, well.' It's really good. And he tests other people in the house to see if they can do it. And he thinks Daddy doesn't do it well. But he's working on Daddy."

3. Will she and Brad really star in a movie together again?
It could happen! But it will be a small movie, she says. "I wrote something we've talked about maybe doing together. Something little and experimental. (John) Cassavetes-style." Maleficent screenwriter Linda Woolverton calls Jolie's writing style modern and "very funny." As for financing? "We have everything we need if we choose to do it. We're really considering it."

4. How are she and Pitt handling their brood growing up?
Maddox is 12, which makes him officially a tween (he even walked the blue carpet solo at Maleficent's L.A. premiere Wednesday). "It's very hard because the parental controls are so extreme," says the mom of six. "You wish there was some magic parental control that could just give them enough of the stuff they're excited about and interested in. You know, some crazy skateboarding stunt accidents, and still not be getting access to certain kinds of other things, drugs or nudity. But (those videos) kind of end up in the same category."

5. What's all this talk about retirement?
"I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress," says Jolie. "It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn't. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues. I'll do a few more films and enjoy it and if I'm blessed to have a good career, but I've never loved it like I love other things."

6. How is Jolie's health?
After last year's reveal that Jolie chose to undergo a preventative double mastectomy, "I'm healthy and happy," she says, sharing that directing the World War II epic Unbroken has helped get her back on track. "That's really been the center of my focus, even through the choice to take care of my health, and Louis (Zamperini, the POW Laura Hillenbrand's novel is based on) was inspirational for that."




With 'Maleficent,' Angelina Jolie begins historic year


LOS ANGELES — An aide runs down the hall. The air changes. The discreetly dressed bodyguard stiffens. Like the prick of a finger on a spindle, that's how you know Angelina Jolie is approaching.
Inside a hotel room, Jolie sips on a diet soda and takes a seat on the couch, her slim legs tucked into a pair of Christian Louboutins she's been wearing lately; they were designed for her, in honor of Maleficent.

The actress sits like a spring; hours of Unbroken footage await her laser-like director's eye. "As soon as I leave today, I go to the editing room," she says wryly, her blue-green eyes momentarily distant.
But first, her dark fairy calls.

What makes a villain?

Maleficent, the big-budget Disney live-action tale (in theaters Friday), was conceived over four years ago with Jolie in mind. The villain was just to her suiting: tough, misunderstood and in total command of every room she enters.

Linda Woolverton, the scribe behind Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and 2010's Alice in Wonderland, has recast Maleficent, who first appeared in Sleeping Beauty, as a dark fairy whose life began innocently, but turned villainous after a childhood friend (we know him as King Stefan) betrays her and steals her powerful wings.

"She is still a villain," says Jolie. "She does, in fact, curse a child. But that people can be villainous and still there is much more to them, and to understand what causes people to be villainous, is important."

Jolie chuckles at the amount of time it's taken to bring the Disney fairy tale to life. "I've never really been a part of a film with all the effects and the 3-D conversion," says the actress.

On the U.K. set, Jolie donned towering horns, gold contacts, sharp prosthetic cheekbones and menacing molars to become Maleficent. She also used her Oscar-winning chops to flesh out her fairy. "There were tears on the set" the day Maleficent lost her wings, says director Robert Stromberg. "You could feel the emotion while we were shooting that."

An extra dose of sweetness comes courtesy of Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, who appears as Toddler Aurora, briefly. The then-3-year-old twin sister of Knox (now 5) was the only child they could cast who wouldn't have a meltdown at the sight of those horns. Instead, she climbed her mother's cloaked legs, demanding, "Up, up."

A full house 

How did Maleficent go down in the Jolie-Pitt household?

"Knox, of course, believes everything and he loves Diaval, he wants to dye his hair black," Jolie says with a laugh, referring to Maleficent's sidekick (played by Sam Riley), who can change into a variety of animals. Shiloh "cried when I get hurt. And then she got angry."

Maddox and Pax "liked the battle scenes best, of course, " she says. "And the dragons and the flying."
Knowing what awaits as their brood enters teenage years makes scenes of Teenage Aurora (played by Elle Fanning) and Maleficent clashing all the more amusing. Maddox, her eldest, is 12 now. The term "tween" gets a laugh out of Jolie. Does their relationship now require a different toolbox as a parent?
"Yes!" she says ruefully (Jolie adopted Maddox in Cambodia in 2002 when he was 7 months old). "It's like we have a new relationship. He comes over to me, he works in my office a few days a week in the editing bay and works on some script breakdowns and does some stuff for me in the edits and helps get me a coffee."

She laughs. "He can also make a mess of my office — he's kind of taken over. But it's just trying to find a new way to communicate with him, not just treating him like a little boy."



Balancing act 

Two years ago, when this reporter visited Maleficent's U.K.-based set, Jolie and Pitt were newly engaged. The topic was largely taboo in her presence. Today, she has an easy answer for the curious: The couple have no plans for a wedding. She has no dress. She's not wearing her engagement ring today, having subbed it out for a simple double diamond band.

What she has, though she refrains from connecting these dots verbally, is an approaching due date to deliver Unbroken to Universal. The epic is based on Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling World War II tale of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic track star-turned-U.S. soldier who becomes a brutalized prisoner of war.

Last year, she and Pitt even broke a long-held vow that they would never overlap their work schedules. But while she shot Unbroken in Australia, Pitt spent time in London, shooting Fury.


"It wasn't easy," she admits today, "mainly because just taking care of the kids. The kids went back and forth, but I had them for most of the time. And just directing and having six kids and not having that backup was a little hard. But he was happy doing his work and it was important he was happy doing something he really wanted to do."

Directing her future 

Unbroken is being positioned to drop at Christmas, in the heart of awards season. That makes Jolie's 2014 tentatively historic for women in film. While women directors of tougher fare, such as Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty), have proven they can win the box office and the awards circuit, it's a small club, to put it kindly.

Would a home run for Jolie reverberate through Hollywood? It may empower studio heads to put more women at the helm of hard-hitting, big-budget movies, says IMDB.com managing editor Keith Simanton. "I think anytime you have established precedent, such as, 'Look at Kathryn Bigelow. Look at Angelina Jolie in Unbroken,' you take that one argument away," he says.

"I look at her and I just think she's kind of fearless," says Fanning. "Which is so inspiring to me. All of her goals she wants to do, she's doing them. And she's succeeding at them, hugely. That's really big for me to see her put her mind to it and actually get it done. And be so elegant along the way."

Jolie may have a tougher time with praise than she shows. "I don't know if I'm a perfectionist as much as I'm really hard on myself," she says, always questioning if she did enough. "I can accomplish many things and feel like I've accomplished nothing."

But bringing Maleficent to life and setting her free to fly in 3-D? "If I was going to ever do a Disney one, this is the one I wanted to do," says Jolie. "And I think we've done it well."





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Saturday, May 24, 2014


video at link


14-ft wings like a pterodactyl, loved Treasure Island and Dumbo, didn't like princesses



thescotsman

Children will have fun with Maleficent’s wickedness

by Alistair Harkness

Angelina Jolie is pondering what she’s learned from playing Maleficent, the eponymous evil queen in Disney’s new live-action family blockbuster. “Oddly,” she says, those famous zeppelin lips arranging themselves into a playful smile, “I learned more about myself as a woman. Which is a very odd thing to say about a horned fairy.” 

She’s referring to the fact that the film, a Wicked-style re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, adds a new psychological dimension to the child-cursing, cheekbone-sculpted villainess Disney cooked up for its 1959 animated spin on the fairytale.

“There is a study in it of how we are born and what kind of people we become,” she continues. “She’s born with a full sense of justice, but then she’s abused – and that turns her and makes her darker. And then what she does with that is go to the worst side: she becomes cruel and hurts innocent people. And then she has to face that and confront what she has become.”

It hardly needs to be said that this is not the usual chat one expects to hear in relation to the main character in a Disney film. Although the studio seems to have been on a mission of late to subvert its back-catalogue with the likes of Frozen and Saving Mr Banks, it’s fair to say Jolie brings a definite edge to the House of Mouse’s publicity machine, casually dismissing Disney princesses of old (“The girls, the female characters, were not girls I admired”) and relishing the opportunity Maleficent afforded her to “embrace her bizarre” – though not, she adds, to intentionally terrify children. “I didn’t play this with the intent to scare children, but rather to draw them in and make them spend time with someone that’s deliciously wicked,” she says. “They’ll have fun with her evil.”

When I meet Jolie, she’s midway through the film’s London press junket. Dressed all in black, tattoos just visible beneath the sleeves of her chiffon dress, she’s a breezy, relaxed presence and lets out a wicked laugh when talk of hanging out in Glasgow during the World War Z shoot triggers memories of her first visit to the city while then-husband Jonny Lee Miller was making Trainspotting. “That was great,” she says, a glint in her eye, “that was a great time.”

Having already talked up the still-to-be-finished Maleficent at a press conference – all the while feeding anecdote-hungry Euro hacks tiny morsels about her kids and volleying back quips about everything from Maleficent’s potentially iconic status among draq queens (“I think we all share a love of this kind of costume”) to whether she’d ever want to explore her role in Mr & Mrs Smith further (“I feel like I lived out the rest of that one,” she deadpans) – she knows this kind of stuff is only a small part of her life now. Offsetting the banality of the “Brangelina” media construct that kicked into gear while making 2007’s aforementioned Mr & Mrs Smith with Brad Pitt, Jolie’s ongoing dedication to humanitarian causes has started to change the conversation around her. “I do feel like I’m able to do more and accomplish more,” she says, referring to her increasing workload as UN Special Envoy and her involvement in the forthcoming “Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict” G8 summit that’s scheduled to take place in London next month. “And people do tend to talk to me more about global issues or health issues or family, than film. It’s nice because it feels very grounded and human to be talking about important issues.”

Jolie’s convictions separate her from the majority of her Hollywood contemporaries. She’s got a handle on fame and is fully cognisant of its downsides. She’s not keen, for instance, for any of her kids to follow in her footsteps, even though her daughter, Vivien, has a small role in Maleficent (a consequence of Jolie’s costume freaking other toddlers out too much to be able to perform opposite her). “I think being an artist is a wonderful life, but I think today, so much of it is about celebrity. It’s not about honing your craft and telling stories. It’s different from when I started.”

That said, she knows that her own baggage can still impact on a project and she thinks “it’s important to be conscious of when you’re adding to a film or when that thing you’ve become is distracting”.

This may partly explain be why she’s planning to step back a little from acting. Though a comment to this effect at the press conference earlier has prematurely generated headlines that she’s retiring from performing at the grand old age of 38, she does confirm that any future roles will have to be quite special to entice her in front of the camera. “I think it has to be something that is very challenging and I’ve never done before and I could learn a lot from.”

I ask if the creative challenges some of her more intense dramatic work offered – films like A Mighty Heart and Changeling – are now being fulfilled by directing. “I do think a lot is satisfied now by directing,” she nods. “I think a lot of what you do as an artist is to tell a story or discuss certain themes or things that are important to you – and find the best way to tell them. And so now, I don’t necessarily feel like I have to be in something, or to express it emotionally myself.”

Jolie’s transition into directing came about quite organically. Although she started with a documentary – 2007’s A Place in Time – she made her feature debut two years ago with In the Land of Blood and Honey, a harrowing, deeply felt drama about the war in Bosnia that did well on the festival circuit – or well enough to put paid to any notions that it was simply a vanity project. “It started simply because I was trying to understand more about the war in Bosnia rather than trying to become a director,” she says. “I wrote something more as an exercise for myself and I just didn’t trust anyone to take it out of my hands, so I ended up, by default, directing it.”

She’s currently editing her second feature, the Coen brothers-scripted Unbroken, and also has a project for her and Pitt, though she’s not sure she will ever make it. “I wrote it three years ago and have been sitting on it and playing with the idea of it. It’s a little independent film. The idea is to give us freedom to be artists; it’s an art film.” She won’t say anything more about it, but is happy to talk at length about Unbroken, particularly its subject, 97-year-old Louis Zamperini, whose incredible life as an Olympic athlete and Second World War hero was documented in Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller of the same name. “It’s so daunting; it’s still daunting,” smiles Jolie of the film, which stars Jack O’Connell as Zamperini. “Sometimes you make a film for entertainment and sometimes you make a film for exploring different things. This film has to be inspiring. The point is to help people with everything going on in their lives. Every time we feel we can’t take any more, you watch Louis’ life and think, I can get back up.”


• Maleficent is in cinemas from 28 May; Unbroken will be released in late 2014 or early 2015.



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